Controlling a giant
About an hour's drive northeast of Berlin, the landscape undergoes a dramatic change as vast, flat expanses give way to rolling hills shaped by the glaciers of the last Ice Age. As a result of the undulating terrain, the Oder-Havel Waterway has to overcome an elevation difference of 36 meters. Just as well that the Niederfinow boat lift, a newly built structure of colossal proportions, is there to help. Like a gigantic elevator, it carries boats up and down in a huge, water-filled trough. The actual travel time is about five minutes a huge improvement on the nearly two hours it took to navigate the original series of locks.
Yet the new technology follows an age-old principle: Massive counterweights keep the trough — weighing about 10,000 tons — in balance, so the motors are mostly only there to deal with inertia and friction. At the heart of the system are custom-designed hydraulic solutions from Rexroth — the market leader in drive and control technology.
Two experts, one goal
Jörg Schumacher, manager of the boat lift, has deep roots in the area: He used to cycle around here as a child. Even back then, he was fascinated by the engineering of the old lift, which began operating in 1934 and is still in use today, right next to its imposing successor. “I always dreamed of helping to put the new lift into operation,” says Schumacher, who has been in charge of both lifts since 2022. Running them in parallel makes sense: “We need the old lift while the new one is undergoing maintenance," he explains. "And we only got proper hands-on insights once the new lift was getting constant traffic.”
To ensure that everything runs smoothly, he relies on trustworthy partners such as Rexroth service technician Marco Schwarzer, based at the Lohr location. Under a service contract, Schwarzer visits the site several times a year for inspections, as well as performing a thorough maintenance check once a year. “The technology is unique to this site; it was designed specifically for Niederfinow,” says Schwarzer as he inspects one of the eight massive yellow hydraulic cylinders that make up the trough-holding system. Their job is to keep the trough absolutely stable if there are unexpected waves, for instance. This isn’t the only safety feature: If a ship enters too fast, a hydraulically damped cable in the ship impact protection system absorbs the force and gently slows it down. “That’s a custom Rexroth solution, too,” says Schwarzer.
When it matters most
The technology and on-site service ensure that the facility is available whenever it's needed, especially when the unexpected happens. “Like during the construction phase, when 600 liters of hydraulic oil leaked out of a faulty line over the weekend without anyone noticing,” recalls Schwarzer. On Monday morning, he and two colleagues were abruptly pulled out of a meeting with the terse command: “You, you, and you — let’s go.” The team from Lohr set out immediately and resolved the issue quickly and easily. The culprit was a defective sealing ring. “Moments like these, when rapid assistance is crucial, highlight the value of our partnership with Rexroth,” says Silvio Czisek, senior site manager for the lead construction consortium, who helped initiate the maintenance contract.
“Projects like the boat lift have to consider the entire life cycle of the facility,” says Dominik Groetsch, who is responsible for service sales at Rexroth. In Niederfinow, a permanent on-call service was agreed alongside the maintenance contract. “Compromises on safety are simply unthinkable in hydraulic steel engineering,” says Groetsch. This way of thinking, combined with the experience gained from over 300 service contracts in industrial hydraulics alone, gives customers the peace of mind they need.
Rexroth’s sales and service network spans more than 80 countries and comprises over 30,000 associates. It also has a global network of partners. For Jörg Schumacher, this reliability means he can focus entirely on what matters most: the complex task of operating his boat lift. Every year, thousands of cargo vessels, passenger boats, and pleasure craft travel via this gigantic structure in the Barnim region. A masterpiece of engineering, it is driven by the passion of the people who operate it and the reliability of the technology that powers it.
With a facility as complex and unique as this one, having personal contact with Rexroth service technicians who know the lift inside out is absolutely invaluable.
Scenes from around the lifting station
